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To make the existence and coherent structure of this Universe
depend upon automatic activity and upon chance is against all
good sense.
Such a notion could be entertained only where there is neither
intelligence nor even ordinary perception; and reason enough has
been urged against it, though none is really necessary.
But there is still the question as to the process by which the
individual things of this sphere have come into being, how they
were made.
Some of them seem so undesirable as to cast doubts upon a
Universal Providence; and we find, on the one hand, the denial of
any controlling power, on the other the belief that the Kosmos is
the work of an evil creator.
This matter must be examined through and through from the very
first principles. We may, however, omit for the present any
consideration of the particular providence, that beforehand
decision which accomplishes or holds things in abeyance to some
good purpose and gives or withholds in our own regard: when we
have established the Universal Providence which we affirm, we can
link the secondary with it.
Of course the belief that after a certain lapse of time a Kosmos
previously non-existent came into being would imply a foreseeing
and a reasoned plan on the part of God providing for the
production of the Universe and securing all possible perfection
in it- a guidance and partial providence, therefore, such as is
indicated. But since we hold the eternal existence of the
Universe, the utter absence of a beginning to it, we are forced,
in sound and sequent reasoning, to explain the providence ruling
in the Universe as a universal consonance with the divine
Intelligence to which the Kosmos is subsequent not in time but in
the fact of derivation, in the fact that the Divine Intelligence,
preceding it in Kind, is its cause as being the Archetype and
Model which it merely images, the primal by which, from all
eternity, it has its existence and subsistence.
The relationship may be presented thus:
The authentic and primal Kosmos is the Being of the Intellectual
Principle and of the Veritable Existent. This contains within
itself no spatial distinction, and has none of the feebleness of
division, and even its parts bring no incompleteness to it since
here the individual is not severed from the entire. In this
Nature inheres all life and all intellect, a life living and
having intellection as one act within a unity: every part that it
gives forth is a whole; all its content is its very own, for
there is here no separation of thing from thing, no part standing
in isolated existence estranged from the rest, and therefore
nowhere is there any wronging of any other, any opposition.
Everywhere one and complete, it is at rest throughout and shows
difference at no point; it does not make over any of its content
into any new form; there can be no reason for changing what is
everywhere perfect.
Why should Reason elaborate yet another Reason, or Intelligence
another Intelligence? An indwelling power of making things is in
the character of a being not at all points as it should be but
making, moving, by reason of some failure in quality. Those whose
nature is all blessedness have no more to do than to repose in
themselves and be their being.
A widespread activity is dangerous to those who must go out from
themselves to act. But such is the blessedness of this Being that
in its very non-action it magnificently operates and in its
self-dwelling it produces mightily.
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